In recent years, the Timberwolves’ owner and vice president of basketball operations have found and lost the likes of Wally Szczerbiak and Terrell Brandon, Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell, all the pieces that were supposed to build a championship team around Kevin Garnett but didn’t. And now Garnett is gone, too, and it is left for Taylor and McHale to take the franchise and start over.

Are they up to the task?

They understand why there are doubters. They know the criticism has some merit, considering the Wolves have finished out of the playoffs the past three seasons and have now traded their marquee player to Boston for young prospects.

“I just think when you’re in leadership, you get undue praise when things go good,” Taylor said after a news conference Tuesday introducing the players acquired in the trade. “When you’re in leadership, you probably get undue criticism when things go bad. But it comes with the position. I learned that a long time ago. As far as looking at this team, we’re not playing as good as I expect or I want.”

Still, Taylor insists McHale is the right person for the job and that the Wolves made the right decision to trade Garnett because it gives them a fresh start and was the best way to improve long term. And he said most season-ticket holders he has spoken with understand that.

He said McHale absolutely could steer the team through the rebuilding process. With help.

“I don’t think I would rely on one person to do that,” Taylor said. “I think we’ve gone to, at least for now, more of a group concept. I probably prefer that. That has worked better for me in my other businesses. I think if we move ahead, it won’t be like ‘Kevin’s vision.’ It will be the group’s vision.

“I think that’s something that Kevin will have to sort out – does he want to do it that way?”

That group includes Taylor, general manager Jim Stack, assistant general managers Fred Hoiberg and Rob Babcock, among others.

McHale said he hasn’t made any long-term plans about his future, giving the same answer he always offers.

In the past, when time and again McHale announced he wasn’t leaving, he said he couldn’t walk away from his job with the team in such disrepair.

Now that McHale has traded Garnett with Taylor’s blessing, he could leave the team in the hands of a successor. But listening to McHale discuss the future, it’s clear that, if anything, this trade has stoked his competitive spirit.

“You’ve got to win,” McHale said. “That’s the bottom line. I took over a team years ago that wasn’t very good. We made the playoffs eight years in a row and had a good, solid team. I thought there were many opportunities when we put ourselves in position to win a playoff series and didn’t. To me, a big (component) of that was style of play. I thought we were a little too finessey all the time.”

But McHale was the one who brought in those players, drafting Garnett shortly after taking over the team in 1995, hiring Flip Saunders and Dwane Casey and now Randy Wittman to coach them.

McHale said the trade brought new players who can play physical basketball. He says the future hinges on players such as Randy Foye, a physical point guard, and forward Craig Smith, a burly banger. Add to that mix newly acquired forwards Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes, and McHale thinks the Wolves will get tougher.

“We haven’t played very well,” McHale said. “That’s very frustrating to me. No one’s satisfied with that. We went through a period, the Malik Sealy (years), Terrell Brandon, that era, where we were winning about 50 games a year. We had some tough guys, but we always played kind of a finesse style of ball. I was never a big proponent of the finesse type of basketball.”

As McHale put it, he wants his players to be “the hitters, not the hittees.”

“That excites me, the style of hopefully how we can play and putting a team together that’s more of a blue-collar, grind-it-out, punch-you-in-the-side team, which is the way I always liked the game to be played,” McHale said.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in Sports

The Vikings reportedly will open next season where the last one ended in bitter disappointment. Minnesota will play at Philadelphia in the NFL opener on Thursday, Sept. 6, according to report Monday by sportscaster Howard Eskin, an Eagles sideline reporter. The Vikings lost 38-7 at Philadelphia in January's NFC Championship Game. The Eagles went on to win Super Bowl LII...

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Twins second baseman Brian Dozier always makes an effort to bond with his keystone partner at shortstop. Since the second half of 2016, that has been young Jorge Polanco. So it was with great sadness that Dozier was forced to react Monday morning to news of Polanco’s 80-game steroid suspension, handed down on Sunday by Major...

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Twins third baseman Miguel Sano has known Jorge Polanco since they were 12-year-old baseball prodigies in the famed town of San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic. So it was an emotional conversation on Sunday evening between the two teammates, friends for half their young lives, after Major League Baseball announced an 80-game steroid suspension...

EUGENE, Ore. — Sabrina Ionescu had 29 points, nine assists and seven rebounds and the second-seeded Oregon Ducks advanced to the Sweet 16 with a 101-73 victory over No. 10 Minnesota in the second round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament on Sunday night. It was the 11th straight victory for the Ducks, who are headed to the round of...

Since signing with the Timberwolves, Derrick Rose has insisted he still has something left in his 29-year-old legs. He proved as much Sunday night. After three underwhelming showings with the Wolves, Rose provided a spark for Minnesota during a 129-120 loss to Houston at Target Center. "Obviously, he's rejuvenated," Jimmy Butler said before the game. "I see him out there...

One word succinctly describes what’s transpired so far in the NCAA Tournament: Madness. But even that’s probably underselling it. A comeback for the ages by Nevada. An entire region left without a Top 4 seed in the Sweet 16 for the first time in tourney history. The 16-seed winner UMBC, falling short in its attempt to extend its historic run...